In a different deck, the Strength card holds the meaning of having our baser, less honorable instincts under control. Presumably, this is for admirable reasons of wanting to be a better person.

In the BG Strength card, those instincts are under control, but not because the demon wants to be a better person. Those instincts are kept under a tentative control grudgingly and would fly to the surface at the slightest provocation. The demon has no intention of keeping them under control for honorable reasons.

Like others, this is the card that drew me to this deck, It's beautiful. I love the suggestion that the two are chained together, that makes sense to me. It feels to me that they are both using each others strengths & power for their own reasons & they seem quite at peace & to me they seem to understand each other, a melding of opposites almost...It reminds me of a situation in my own life at present a little....the lion is big & scary, strong & proud, no one will mess with him because he would rip them apart...but she is there resting upon him because she understands him & how to get close to him, she draws on his power.....She seems quite cold & untouchable & even a little odd, but he knows that she understands his power & that the isolation it brings makes him vulnerable sometimes... & he needs to be understood...
Am I rambling.....
When I saw the mists at the bottom of the card the first thing I thought was they're spirits..... in the bottom right, it looks like the side of someone's head seen from the back & slightly to their left....
I am so enjoying looking through this deck

"It feels to me that they are both using each others strengths & power for their own reasons & they seem quite at peace & to me they seem to understand each other, a melding of opposites almost..."

MM I agree with this! I love this card and am a "newbie" to the BG deck as well. This card reminds me that there is a little "animal" in all of us and a little "human" in animals. I love animals and I think sometime animals are more honourable than humans.
I'm going to have to ponder more, though. I had a friend of mine who was looking through the deck and when he saw the Strength card he remarked, "oh, that is so you!" All the posts have commented on the "demonic woman" and to be truthful I didn't even notice the wings she had, I was so mesmerized by the Lion and her pose. For some reason the people in all the BG cards seem like real people and I'm not scared, although I am a huge sissy when it comes to watching horror films or anything remotely scary.
To me the woman is independent, clever, instinctive very "Xena Warrior Princess" type.

The two figures in the Strength card really remind me of the suit of Swords right now when I look at it. The two sides of the sword, dull and sharp. The lion doesn't seem like the "sharp" side, in all honesty. The intense glare the human gives is intimidating enough for both of them! Also, the chain hanging between them isn't obviously showing them chained to anything, but it doesn't seem a stretch of the imagination to say that they're both chained to each other by the neck.

The overall feeling I get from the card is of that silent moment before attack. The lion just feels more mellow than the human and I wouldn't think would be the one to strike first. The wings of the human are all ready spread and in an instant could use them to spring forward and do damage with her claws (?)-- it really calls into question how much an impact the human can make. What's upset her so much to only create a seething frustration in the lion but terrible rage in her? It goes to show that the trivial things that anger humans mean nothing in the animal kingdom; in the scheme of things, so to speak.

Their location on the steps and the foggy sort of thing going on in the bottom right hand corner gives me the impression of this being an apparition of sorts or some sort of vision. Like they're protectors of the home or spirits that oversee an entrance. The visage of the lion in the background is similar to representations of gargoyles who are placed on buildings to keep bad spirits at bay. The lion and woman who have appeared are the spirits that guard.

However, it does bring up the point of the wings. Why inky black wings? It doesn't seem like a blessed human... or perhaps, she's the sort of spirit the lion is protecting against? That violent expression the spirit has is like a taunt to the lion's calm demeanor which she is trying to crack.

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